New, tips, and more
From The Great Beyond (a “Nature” blog):
Ok, the headline is a little misleading. But it’s still a bit worrying that NASA has found a computer virus on the space station.
Astronauts onboard the International Space Station are now running anti-virus software on their systems, following last week’s detection of an unwanted computer-guest.
According to Space.ref a ‘W32.Gammima.AG worm’ was detected on the ISS.
From the New York Times:
Anything that keeps tykes pacified on long car trips, like video systems in rear seats, is a boon to automotive safety. Today, Chrysler is poised to offer in its 2009 models a new entertainment option for the children: Wi-Fi and Internet connectivity. The problem is that the entire car becomes a hotspot. The signals won’t be confined to the Nintendos in the rear seat; front-seat occupants will be able to stay online, too.
Bad idea. As drivers, we have done poorly resisting the temptation to move our eyes away from the road to check e-mail or send text messages with our cellphones. Now add laptops.
The New York Times has a nice article about some “how-to” sites:
On the Web’s amazing how-to sites, I am studying bar tricks. I should be learning, once and for all, how to do CPR, but all I really want to know is how to mix a Singapore Sling, palm a card and tongue-knot the stem of a maraschino cherry.
The best thing about how-to sites like Howcast, eHow, WonderHowTo, Instructables, SuTree, VideoJug and ExpertVillage — huge collections of videos that offer instruction in Chinese dining etiquette and surviving zombie attacks, plating fettuccine Alfredo and linking spins in freestyle kayaking — is that they revive a lost era of two-bit skills, when Cross pens whirled around thumbs, Zippos burst in and out of flames and someone was forever trying to show you how.
From the New York Times:
Removing her ex-husband from more than a decade of memories may take a lifetime for Laura Horn, a police emergency dispatcher in Rochester. But removing him from a dozen years of vacation photographs took only hours, with some deft mouse work from a willing friend who was proficient in Photoshop, the popular digital-image editing program.
Like a Stalin-era technician in the Kremlin removing all traces of an out-of-favor official from state photos, the friend erased the husband from numerous cherished pictures taken on cruises and at Caribbean cottages, where he had been standing alongside Ms. Horn, now 50, and other traveling companions.
“In my own reality, I know that these things did happen,” Ms. Horn said. But “without him in them, I can display them. I can look at those pictures and think of the laughter we were sharing, the places we went to.”
“This new reality,” she added, “is a lot more pleasant.”
From the New York Times:
The best password is a long, nonsensical string of letters and numbers and punctuation marks, a combination never put together before. Some admirable people actually do memorize random strings of characters for their passwords — and replace them with other random strings every couple of months.
Then there’s the rest of us, selecting the short, the familiar and the easiest to remember. And holding onto it forever.
I once felt ashamed about failing to follow best practices for password selection — but no more. Computer security experts say that choosing hard-to-guess passwords ultimately brings little security protection. Passwords won’t keep us safe from identity theft, no matter how clever we are in choosing them.
From the New York Times:
The Federal Communications Commission formally voted Friday to uphold the complaint against Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, saying that it had illegally inhibited users of its high-speed Internet service from using popular file-sharing software. The decision, which imposes no fine, requires Comcast to end such blocking this year.
Kevin J. Martin, the commission’s chairman, said the order was meant to set a precedent that Internet providers, and indeed all communications companies, could not keep customers from using their networks the way they see fit unless there is a good reason.
From the New York Times:
After a closer examination of a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology known as the Antikythera Mechanism, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games.
From the New York Times:
“No one wants to die,” said Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs. “And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.”
It was a little over three years ago that Mr. Jobs spoke those existential words, in a commencement address at Stanford. His thoughts about death came during a portion of his speech in which he publicly discussed — for the one and only time, so far as I can tell — his brush with pancreatic cancer.
From the Globe and Mail (Report on Business):
Have you ever lied in an e-mail?
Honestly, you’re not alone. A U.S. study released Thursday shows e-mail is much more conducive to telling falsehoods than using old-fashioned pen and paper. Moreover, people feel more justified in doing it.
The findings challenge the notion that e-mails are just the same as other written communication, the study’s authors said.
The results “illustrate that traditional pen-and-paper communication is indeed different from e-mail in the way it influences people’s behaviours, even though both [are] text only,” said Charles Naquin of DePaul University, Terri Kurtzberg of Rutgers University, and Liuba Belkin of Lehigh University.
Previous research has found e-mails are associated with unseemly behaviour such as lower levels of trust, negative attitudes and “flaming” – sending rude messages. This study suggests a greater propensity to lie can be added to that list.
From PCWorld.ca:
The release of Intel’s 8086 microprocessor in 1978 was a watershed moment for personal computing. The DNA of that chip is likely at the center of whatever computer–Windows, Mac, or Linux–you’re using to read this, and it helped transform Intel from merely one of many chip companies to the world’s largest.
Recent Comments